Measles cases soar to 80% worldwide

Measles cases soar to 80% worldwide

Measles cases have surged nearly 80% worldwide this year the UN has said.

The disruption caused by Covid-19, other factors suggest a “canary in a coalmine” sign that illness outbreaks of other diseases were likely to be on the way.

The coronavirus pandemic has interrupted vaccination campaigns for non-Covid diseases around the world creating a “perfect storm” the UN’s children’s agency Unicef and the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement.

Measles is a disease caused by a virus that attacks mainly children, the most serious cases involve blindness, brain swelling, diarrhoea, and severe respiratory infections.

It is said vaccination uptake of at least 95% is the best way to avoid it spreading.

The Guardian reported more than 17,300 measles cases were reported in January and February, compared with about 9,600 during those months last year, according to new data from the UN agencies.

There have been 21 large and disruptive measles outbreaks in the 12 months to April, the data cited mostly Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.

Christopher Gregory, senior health adviser in Unicef’s immunisation section, told Agence France-Presse that because measles was the “most contagious vaccine-preventable disease”

“Measles is what we call the tracer, or the canary in the coalmine, that really shows us where those weaknesses in the immunisation system are,” he said.

Yellow fever was among the diseases that could surge next, he added.

“We’re particularly worried about those countries that are most fragile, where the healthcare systems are already really struggling, where they’re still trying to deal with the impacts of Covid on top of these outbreaks,” he said.

The UN agencies said due to the pandemic delays, 57 vaccination campaigns in 43 countries were postponed at the start, though had still not been completed, affecting 203 million people – most of them children.

“The impact of these disruptions to immunisation services will be felt for decades to come,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

“Now is the moment to get essential immunisation back on track and launch catch-up campaigns so that everybody can have access to these life-saving vaccines.”
Gregory said it was time to put childhood immunisation on “at least the same level of priority as finishing Covid vaccination”.